Death Becomes Me (Call Me Grim Book 2) (26 page)

“Right.” I glance down at our joined hands. “And you’re okay with this?”

“I have to be, Libs.” His voice is steady, his eyes unwavering. “I made my choice. I chose Haley. And I’m okay with that. Whatever happens as I walk toward that light, I’m okay with that too.”

“Okay,” I say as I tighten my grip on his hand. “And just so you know, I love you, Kyle. Maybe not in the way you wanted, but I still love you. I just—”

“I know, Libs,” he cuts me off.  “I love you, too.”

I nod and repeat what he said I’m supposed to say here, almost word for word.

As I speak, the smell of burning flesh and rotting meat permeates the air. Faces push out of the walls and stretch against the Blackness. There are so many of them. So many souls Abaddon has trapped in the Blackness to use against his Reapers as Shadows. My stomach roils with nausea as they reach, scream, and beg for release. It’s just so wrong.

And Aaron will soon be one of them. I wonder if I’ll recognize his face among the crowd. I hope not. I don’t think I could handle seeing him like this.

The last word of my speech drops from my mouth like a stone. Silence follows.

Kyle lets go of my hand, squares his shoulders, and walks toward the distant pinpoint of light on the horizon. After a few steps, he turns back to me. His deep-brown eyes sparkle as he lifts his hand in a final wave. I smile and wave back, though it hurts so bad to say goodbye.

A smile brightens his face, but I only see it for a moment before he turns back toward the light.

I’m going to miss that smile.

31

Abaddon beams at me as my feet touch the grass in the center of the clearing and all I want to do is punch him, whether it’s my mother’s face he’s wearing or not.

“Well done,” he says with a proud grin, which magnifies my desire for violence about a thousand times.

“Whatever,” I say instead of what I’m dying to say. He’s still wearing my mother’s soul, after all. “I did what you wanted. Now, you do what you promised.” I dig my fists into my hips. “Let my mother go.”

“Gladly. But, first, my exchange.” Abaddon faces Aaron. “You must choose to come into the circle of your own volition, boy. I cannot interfere with the free will of the living, unless they have agreed.”

A derisive laugh escapes me. I can’t help it. He said that last sentence like he meant it. Like becoming a Shadow was something the people trapped in the Blackness happily agreed to. The idea is so ludicrous I’d think it was a joke, if anyone other than Abaddon had said it.

Aaron’s attention turns to me. I expect him to give me a disapproving shake of the head or something, but he just looks at me. His eyes shimmer in the tree-filtered sunlight as he studies me from across the clearing.

I want to close the distance between us, touch him, kiss him, look him in the eye and tell him I love him and I’m so, so sorry it had to end this way. My lips part, ready to spill the words in my head, but Aaron stops me with words of his own.

“Thank you, Libbi.” His voice cracks on my name and he swallows hard before continuing. “After forty years of just existing, thanks for reminding me what it’s like to be alive.”

“I love you, Aaron.”

And there it is. Out of my mouth and into the air. I don’t even have the buffer of a sheet of paper anymore. Although I just said those exact words to Kyle a few minutes ago, it means something different this time, something more. The feeling is just as strong and meaningful to me as the love I expressed to Kyle, but it’s totally different.

“I love you, too,” he says without hesitation. His eyes stay with me for a long moment, then scan to the Gateway at my back, then to Abaddon, then back to me. “Keep an eye on Sara for me.”

He doesn’t wait for my reply. In three long strides Aaron crosses the distance to stand at the threshold where the thick weeds abruptly end and the circle of knife-like blades of grass begin. He steps over the line and enters the circle surrounding the Gateway. His feet settle in the grass.

A loud snap sounds beside me and I look over at Mom. The black inky stuff clears from her eyes. She turns to me, revealing her bright green irises. It’s Mom. She’s back. He freed her.

“Libbi” is all she has time to say. Her soul jerks forward and out of the circle by the glowing thread-like tether that joins her soul to the lifeless body left behind in the hospital bed across town.

The tentacle-like thing that held her soul snakes away from where her feet were a moment ago. But instead of slithering back into the Gateway, like the one holding Haley’s soul did, it rears up like a cobra and shoots across the grass.

Aaron’s back straightens as Abaddon’s pulsing shadow coils around his ankles. His wide eyes meet mine for a moment then he doubles over. A cry like nothing I’ve ever heard before bursts from Aaron and skewers me in the gut and in the heart. I cry out too, though it’s useless. More than anything, I want to look away from his writhing, pain-racked body. I don’t want to witness this, but I can’t stop.

Tearing. Ripping like paper, but somehow meatier, wetter. The tentacle of black ink lurches with each sickening sound. My stomach turns and threatens to color the grass at my feet with vomit, but I choke it back.

The awful sound stops and Abaddon’s tether finally pulls away from Aaron’s feet, but it drags a long string of pulsing light with it. It sucks the light from Aaron like a vacuum, his body becoming darker and darker as his soul disappears into the black tentacle thing.

It’s consuming him. Abaddon is consuming the soul of the boy I love. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

Aaron’s limp and mostly empty body collapses to the ground.

The black tentacle thing squirms in the grass next to Aaron’s body. It lurches and buckles like an overgrown black maggot. Then it rears up. Ten, fifteen feet, it towers over me. The oily surface of the thing ripples and boils and I think I see something moving inside. A face. Aaron’s face pushes out of the black sludge and his blue eyes spring open. They find me and his lips silently form my name.

“And now, Aaron Shepherd,” Abaddon uses Aaron’s mouth to say, “It’s time for your punishment for disobeying me.”

Aaron’s hand shoots up from the black goo even as his mouth forms the word ‘no’. His eyes snap shut.

“You. Will. Watch. This.” Abaddon says and Aaron’s eyes spring back open.

A black rope of fire bursts from Aaron’s raised palm and coils around my left wrist. Searing agony circles my wrist like a bracelet of burning coals. It scorches into my skin, into my muscle, into my bone. I can smell it. My own flesh. Cooking.

Suddenly, gratefully, the pain vanishes and the rope yanks away, taking with it my left hand. I hold my charred and smoking stump up to my disbelieving eyes, my dry mouth too stunned to scream. He took it. My left hand. He made Aaron watch as he punished me in the worst way possible. He took my free will. And he took my art.

“Now, she is mine forever,” Abaddon says.

Aaron’s shocked face disappears as Abaddon retreats into the Gateway. The split in reality that is the Gateway seals behind them. And they are gone. One thin thread of light stretches from Aaron’s body to the middle of the circle. Like Mom and Haley, before Abaddon set their souls free to rejoin their bodies, Aaron’s body is still alive and won’t release his soul completely. Not that it matters much. What lies curled on the ground is little more than an empty shell.

He did this for me. He sacrificed himself for me.

How could I let him do this? How did it get so out of control?

My legs wobble and with a sob, I drop to my knees beside Aaron’s body and bury by face in the crook of my elbow. Tears stream down my cheeks and make polka dots in the dirt and I’m helpless to stop them. I can’t do anything but kneel beside Aaron and cry. Chest heaving, I try to catch my breath between watery sobs.

My tears aren’t just for Aaron. They’re for Kyle, too. I’ve lost one of my best friends. What will Haley do when she wakes up and learns her twin brother is dead? And their parents? And, oh God, Max? He’ll be devastated. And I won’t even be able to tell them why he did it. I won’t be able to tell them that Kyle is a hero. That thought alone brings another wave of grief and tears.

And the tears continue to fall, not just for those I’ve lost, but also for me. For my freedom. Whether I like it or not, I’m a Reaper, now. Forever. Abaddon has taken my right to choose. But I’ve lost more than just my freedom. I’ve lost my left hand. The only thing that has kept me sane through all of this is gone. I’ve lost my ability to draw, to paint, to sculpt. I’ve lost my meaning, my purpose, my expression. I’ve lost the only thing I knew I was good at. I will never hold a pencil again.

I don’t know how long I sit beside Aaron’s motionless body with my legs curled under me and my head in my hand. The sun sinks low in the sky and the shadows of the trees stretch across the clearing like the bars of a prison. I can’t stay here anymore. I have to go.

My stiff joints ache as I push to my feet. I swipe my damp face and straighten, ready to push through the weeds and climb the hill. Back to Hell’s Highway. Back to Carroll Falls. Back to start my life as Carroll Falls’ newest Grim Reaper. Just like Abaddon, and Aaron, and even Kyle wanted.

But I can’t leave Aaron. I can’t. I know only a fraction of his soul is inside of his body, and the rest of it is held captive inside the Blackness, but I can’t leave him here. I can’t bear the thought of him lying on the cold ground in such an awful place. What if his body needs to be cared for? Could he die out here?

And what about Haley? Who knows when she’ll wake up from her Shadow-induced coma? It could be days. Kyle’s blood-soaked body lies just outside the circle, hidden by the thick underbrush. What if no one ever finds him? He deserves more than that. I have to do something.

What can I do? I’m a full-blown Reaper now. Invisible. Inaudible. A living ghost with one hand.

During my short training, Aaron told me a Reaper has no effect on the living. We cannot touch them or take away their free will. Whatever we do is either invisible to them or ignored by them. I saw that first-hand the day in the diner when Bobby ate right off of that woman’s plate without her noticing. She acted as if she had taken the monster-sized bite out of that pancake herself.

But Bobby
did
take a bite, and the bite
did
disappear. That first day, when Aaron folded his letter to me into an origami flower, his writing might have been invisible to Max, but the flower itself was not. And Renee saw my artwork. I was able to sell my work to the living. Aaron had to say they were his, but they were still visible.

Kyle is no longer among the living. Maybe I can touch him. Maybe I can move him.

Maybe I can bring him up to the road where he’ll be seen. Whoever finds him won’t know how he got there. They might not even know how he died, since he was killed by a Reaper’s Scythe, but they’ll see him. He’ll get back to his family.

The trees above sway in the soft breeze as I make my way to Kyle. The setting sun casts the clearing in purple shadows. I’m grateful for the lack of light. It makes the blood soaking his clothes and pooling under him less red, less violent, less real.

I bend down and scoop him into my arms, surprised—not for the first time—at my strength. I was right. I can move him. But I’m too exhausted to feel anything but sadness. His body sags in my arms as I hold him close to my chest. Careful not to drop him, I float up the hill to Hell’s Highway. There, I gently lay him in the gravel on the shoulder of the road, certain the next passing driver will see him.

My lips press against his temple in one last good-bye, then I turn back to the Gateway and the still living, though mostly empty, body beside it.

If I can move Kyle, maybe I can move Haley and Aaron. Maybe I can carry Haley up to the road with Kyle. Then I can take Aaron to Sara’s house. She’ll take care of him, I’m sure.

I squat next to Haley, wiggle my good arm under her body, and try to sit her up. She’s always been petite, at least twenty pounds lighter than me. I could lift her a few inches off the ground when I wasn’t a Reaper. If I could carry Kyle’s muscular drummer’s body up the hill without breaking a sweat, it should be a breeze to lift Haley. But as hard as I try, she won’t budge. It’s as if her body is petrified and glued to the ground.

Her soul is inside of her body. Maybe that’s what’s weighing her down. Aaron’s soul is mostly missing. Maybe I’ll be able to move him.

I go to him, slide my good arm under his back and lift, but it’s the same as it was with Haley. He’s frozen in place. I can’t leave him here inside the circle where his soul was stolen. I have to I try again. And I do. Again and again. Until my muscles ache and I can hardly move and I have no choice but to fall back into the grass, gasping for air.

Fine. If I can’t move his living body, I’ll stay with him for as long as I can, until the headache of a dying soul forces me to leave.

“Someone will find you, Aaron,” I say as I lay down beside him. “Either Haley, when she wakes up, or someone else. I promise.”

His body feels warm and familiar as I rest my head on his shoulder and press myself against his side. I drape my arm over him and it rises and falls steadily with each breath that he takes. I let my fingers trail down his chest, over the lines of the scars he took for Sara. Scars I know he would have taken for me. The first time he showed me these scars I was horrified, but now I can’t imagine him without them. They are him. They are his bravery, his love, his loyalty, his devotion.

My elbow hits something on the waistband of his jeans. Something hard and plastic. I sit up to get a better look and bite back the insane laugh that claws up my throat when I see what it is.

The Scrambler. Nicholas gave Aaron the Scrambler, probably to help him get halfway across the country without attracting every Reaper on the way.

Nicholas must have fixed the draining problem. Good for him. Wish he could fix this.

Maybe he can. The Scrambler works. It got Aaron here unscathed, so it must work. Does the Gateway-closing part of it work as well? Nicholas said he’d need thousands of them to make any difference, but one working one is a heck of a start. Right? Unless Nicholas decides one of his other theories is correct and closing the Gateways would be stupid, if not world-shatteringly dangerous.

I lay my cheek on Aaron’s chest and choose to ignore Nicholas’s other theories for now.  I need something to cling to. Hope. I need it more than I need anything right now. Hope is all I have.

The rising moon casts silvery light on Aaron’s peaceful face. It’d be so easy to pretend he’s just asleep. So easy to pretend this was all a dream and we’re curled up together in his bed in Chicago. So easy to pretend he didn’t sacrifice his soul for me. That in a few short hours he’ll wake me with a kiss, like a prince in a fairy tale.

It would be easy.